Ep. 411: Boned from the Right, Boned from the Left

which is only fourteen miles away. Yeah, so it's comforting in some way covering American news from Mexico. Here's the headline from the New York Times. Biden moves to end donnut lures and other bear hunting tactics in Alaska. This is the story that never goes away. One might see that and think, uh, well that sounds horrible. Don't ut lures, I don't like that, um, and then be happy about what's going on. This this story we have reported on. This is one of those seesaw stories that comes up

as as administrations change. Um. It's also one of the stories I always feel like that I should I should get to be the one that writes the article because I would write it different than everybody else. Let me back up to explain what's going on up until no I'm trying to think of how far back to go. I'm gonna go pretty far back. When Alaska became a state. A. I'm not gonna get into great deal detail on this,

but people can go look into this. When Alaska be am a state, an issue a negotiating point was wildlife management in Alaska okay um, meaning Alaska want to hang onto its wildlife management and Alaska has some management issues in the state where they have a thing called subsistence hunting. Okay. When Alaska looks at the finite resource, which would be

fishing game, Alaska always will favor subsistence practices. Okay. If you are a person like me who lives in the lower forty eight and goes into Alaska to hunt, you are the lowest priority in in Alaska wildlife management. The highest priority in Alaska wildlife management is subsistence users. Next to that, sitting below subsistence users are certain commercial practices. Okay, So like commercial fishing, um, the guiding industry. Okay, they're gonna get it. So let's say you have a finite

resource like salmon is a finite resource. Top of the stack are going to be the needs of subsistence users who rely on phish and game for the for to eat for sustenance. There they get first DIBs. Second DIBs would be the commercial industry. Third DIBs would be recreationalists. Okay, most states that that that don't have that subsistence thing will look at it'll be it'll be commercial, recreational and those are the competing interests. But Alaska, you have a

third competing interest, which is subsistence. So keep that in the back of your head as you hear we're talking about. Alaska uses predator management, as do many states in lower forty eight. Alaska uses predator management on the apologetically two increase and hold stable populations of big game. And they

don't do this like it's a naughty little secret. It's like, in my view, in Alaska's view, there is absolutely nothing wrong with saying we would like to have we would like to increase big game numbers at the expense of some predators in order to be able to provide big game resources to subsistence users too, guides and outfitters to recreationalists. They look, and it's like there's a lever that you

can move, you can reduce predators, big game populations. It's it's a thing that they do in order to reduce predator numbers. They have a number, they have things at their disposal. It could be it could hiring people to go into airplanes an airplane gun for wolves. I remember that because when when when Palin? How do you feel

about Palin? When Palin really became in the spotlight as John McCain's running mate under her governorship in Alaska, they had done aerial wolf shooting as a predator management tool, and I feel like a lot of Americans got the idea that that Sarah Palin herself was the wolf gunner. It was sort of like really laid on her doorstep. But this is a historic practice that that long predated Palin. Okay, this is the thing that since since aircraft came into being,

they have been using aircraft to control wolf numbers. Another thing they'll do to control predator numbers is rather than have it be a state sponsored activity paid for by the state, you can control old predator numbers through the lever of subsistence hunter practices, recreational hunter practices guiding outfitter practices, meaning you can make predator hunting easier and more productive

by having certain management strategies in place. Now, some of these management strategies people find distasteful when they hear about them out of context and in isolation. For instance, if I told you Um about going that someone was gonna go in den dig for black bears, you would be, oh, how heartless and horrible. Well on the Koyukon people Um, who are from the vicinity of the Koyakok River which flows into the Yukon, they felt uh when the anthropologists

Richard K. Nelson spent time with them. They had explained to Richard K. Nelson that they felt that it was unethical to kill a bear otherwise than to dig it out of its den. That the shooting up and out of the ground was not acceptable. If you wanted to hunt bears, you went to You knew through ancestral knowledge and through your own discoveries. You knew where bears denned, You knew den sits, and when you went out for bears, you went in the winter and you crawled into bear

dens to check if they're being occupied. And that is how a real hunter hundred bears. And a thing that we all know now and like it has broader and broader buy in is that you do not go in in uh. You know, there's there's this sort of de facto reverence for hunter gatherer practices, like it was how it was done. Okay, So in Alaska there are places historically where it has been legal two den dig for bears.

It was legal ton dig for bears. It was a customary practice to den dig for bears before there was law, before there was state law or federal law. People were den digging bears. That's how they were doing it. There's another management practice in Alaska that gets a lot of criticism, and this is the practice of shooting swimming animals. Okay, in a lot of states, you simply cannot shoot a

swimming animal. However, there are areas in Alaska that are extraordinarily remote and you can only get to them by air or by boat, and subsistence hunters have historically hundred in some of these areas by going into these areas and penetrating these areas the only way one can, which

is by boat. And the caribou hunting practice would be that you would go to these known crossings during caribou migrations, and you would take boat there and set up a camp at a cariboo crossing, and you would hunt caribou as they were crossing the river out of boats. It had been done prior with at laddles and spears. As firearms came into being, it made it became the practice. You can't get them any other place than to catch

them crossing the river in a vast wilderness. So, prior to law, prior to state law, prior to federal law, it was a practice in certain places to hunt caribou that were swimming because you're killing them at fords. And it's how indigenous hunters had done it, and other people that followed in their path had done it, and they that practice had become codified into law because it was

historic use. What's another one we covered den dig and Oh, another one would be um that when you're trying to lower wolf numbers in order to increase cariboan moose numbers, that you might allow the killing of wolf pops. Okay, because from the manager's perspective, you're trying to raise prey numbers, you're trying to raise meat for humans and in order to raise meat for humans. As the level you can

pull is killing wolves. I guess looking at it, the wolf that's getting killed in predator control um doesn't feel better or worse about his death, knowing what his ages meaning. A five year old wolf isn't like, oh, I understand, shoot me, I'm five, but a one year old wolf would be like, oh, the horror and sin. It's like, it's you're you're reducing wolf numbers and you're just gonna do it the most productive way you can think of,

which should be reduced wolf numbers. So these practices are historic. Practices have always been in place in Alaska. I'm getting to the part that burns my U. We haven't got there yet. Well, no, because this is the thing Like like everyone that writes about this, every I haven't even gotten to the to the whip saw. I haven't even

gotten to the whipsaw. Party joined a Day by Jason Phelps, Clay Nwcomb, Clay Newcomb, Nwcomb, Bridget Newton in first, like Matt Cook, who's been on the show before, it has yet to speak, but he has a question. I have a question, and for the first time, Jason Bergsman, the last of the old Kusman. You have a question just on what it covered. Do you have a question. I haven't got to the part, but go ahead. I have

a question. We're laying the ground. How does a rancher who you know, has predation problems and poisons like a wolf, how does that fit in two that that's a that's a non thing. Okay, yeah, that's a non thing. Um. Now, if you were to go and read, if you were going to read um Alaska's Wolfman, about one of the first wolf guys that went up into Alaska. I think he became active in the twenties. UM. And at the they were they were there's this there's this book, Alaska's

wolf Man. It's it's a fascinating read. And he goes up and he goes out to work for the state of Alaska on wolf control, typically in areas where caribou herds have been greatly depleted, and later in areas where they were doing economic development and they were going to UM. He spends a bunch of time up by cots of you whereas an economic development plan they were trying to

get Native Alaskans set up in the reindeer herding business. Okay, Okay, they were trying to stabilize food resources and get them set up to be reindeer herders. But they would bring in these reindeer herds and they would just get decimated by wolves. Then in Alaska's Wolfman, he goes from being just a gun hunter, like doing wolf control with guns,

and then he gets do poisons. And I think he's he's getting into poisons even in the nineteen fifties, and just how amazingly effective that's yeah, Like he talks about just how astonishingly effective the poisons are. Like he'll go he he talks about going into an area this is near costs Abue. He goes into an area with poison pellets and he would just go out and shoot something and lace it. And he gets to where he feels

he's killed every wolf. There's no wolves left. A guy reports to him they saw like seven gray wolves and two black wolves come across the ice, come across some bay and get into the area he's in. And he's like, sure enough. A couple days later, he goes to one of his bait stations. There's seven gray wolves and two black wolves laying dead at his bait station. Like astonishingly effective.

When we talk about wolfers in the lower forty eight they were poisoning wolves, not as predator control, I mean they did eventually, but the first guy's poisoning wolves, and even starting in the eighteen sixties, they were poisoning wolves for the wolf hide trade. And they would use strict nine. You would shoot an animal, gash it, cut gashes in it, and mix of just like an infintestinal amount of strict nine.

I think they would mix it with water and scatter it on the carcass, and then you'd wait a while and go and pick it up. In Life, and there's a book, Life and Death of the Mouth of the Muscle Shell, which is a guy's journal, and he'll talk about going and checking his bait stations and coming back

with with forty wolves. He also talks about I can't remember which tribe, but the tribe a tribal representative coming into his establishment at the Mouth of the Muscle Shell where the muscle shell flows into the Missouri's underwater now because the Fort Peck Reservoir. A guy comes in and it has a gripe about the wolf baiting practices because they were traveling through the area and lost twenty four

of their dogs to these guys strict nine baits. So they were wolfers, and they wolfers because at that time there was a fad that when you had a wagon, there was a it was fashionable to have a wolf pelt blanket, got it for your guests in your wagon. So on a cold day, you get into your wagon, you'd want to be able to have your guests cover up with a wolf pelt blanket. And that drove the wolf for poison trade, and then in time it became um they were poisoning for for predator control. And then

eventually the practice of poisoning wolves was eliminated. But they'll still in place, they'll still use this little gun was that you know the name of that thing. Basically, a coyote takes a bait and it have you heard that the capsule delivers it. But it has to be like you're not just lacing baits. Alaska's wolfman, he'll talk about going into his laced baits and he's got birds, he's

got wolverines, he's got is everything scattered around dead? Uh, But that's not that's not a thing they're doing right now. And I would also argue if if if they were using poisons right now in Alaska for predator control, you would lose the ability to talk. What I was just trying to do is laying out that these are historic use practices that if if we're gonna go look, if you're gonna go look in wild game management and you're gonna go look at like what's ethical, what's not ethical? Um,

it's all it's so arbitrary and so personal. I think that that Alaska's I think Alaska is great about acknowledging and protecting traditional use practices, even if even if preserving traditional use practices might come at the expense of allowing new technologies. They were one of the first states. I think they might have been the first state I heard of that with drones. They were done with drones before

other people started to address the question. Someone could correct me if I'm wrong, But I think that they might have been the first state and then and then like a bunch of Western states followed. They might have been the first state to be like no on drones. So it's not that like Alaska doesn't have a come one, come all, kill them all by any means necessary policy. They follow traditional use practices. It's not you know, and the new stuff they might go and get rid of.

So they were like early on guys, you could you could use you can picture how clay, you could picture this, how effective drones would be for hunting moose. You're in willow flats, everything's twelve feet high. You have this big black animal. You know what's right. It's got to be right around you in a willow flats, the paddles. It's not like you're not it's not gonna hide from a drone. And they right away were like, no on drones. But but in places you can take a bear out of

its hole. But this get this gives me the second part of what burns masks about this whole thing that was the first. No, just that's just background because I'm trying to establish. Keep in mind these management practices that Alaska has. Okay, now let's look at the restraint with which they will exercise them. Okay, go to Region two of Alaska. In Region two of Alaska, which is Prince of Wales Island. Get Unit two or whatever the region I think they call the units unit to Prince Wales

on Alaska. Black bears a predator. Okay, you can't hunt it from not only like, you can't hunt it from a boat. You cannot legally that the ruthless state of Alaska that just wants to kill all the predators. If you're in Prince Wales Island, you have to have your feet on the ground. You cannot shoot a black or from a boat. You cannot shoot a saw. You can't shoot cubs. You can't shoot a saw with cubs. You have salvage requirements always the skull meet in the spring, meeting,

hide in the spring, hide in the fall. You have a permit draw where if you're a nonresident, you have about a chance of getting an opportunity to hunt one of these predators at all. No den digging. Okay. Because they have a management practice in their toolbox does not mean they universally exercise it. Okay, It's just a thing they have the ability to do. But generally, all of these practices that I'm naming out, generally you can't. Generally

they don't in places they do. During the Obama administration, the Feds came to say to Alaska, they came and made this this this this this like like very arbitrary seeming designation where the national like through the National Parks or if they come and said, we're gonna eliminate Alaska's ability to exercise certain practices that they may or may not currently be exercising on refuge land, on federal refuge land. So here you have a state that has game management

authority in their state. The Feds manage a ton of land in Alaska. But that's that's always like, that's the system of checks and balances that exists all over the US. You have tons of federal land on which the wildlife on that land is managed by the state. It's it's a phenomenal system. I never credit like like I love

federally managed managed land. I'm suspicious of federal wildlife management when it supersedes a state's management decision, especially in the case like Alaska's where they still have grizzly bears across like of their historic range. We in the Lower forty eight can't say the same thing we have. We we wiped them out in Lower forty eight. They didn't wipe theirs out. They have wolves across the entirety of their historic range. Do we know they didn't wipe theirs out?

They have their entire suite of megafauna still intact. We don't. They haven't wiped theirs out. So when you go and look and be like, oh, Alaska needs have changed their ways, by what evidence, they haven't. They haven't committed any sins against God in terms of eliminating animals from the landscape. So to go and and and and and to go to them and say to them, oh, your management practices, what you may or may not be doing right now,

can no longer be applied on refuge lands. And under Obama they made it be the on percent of the state is what it winds up being. In our efforts to save the world, We're going to tell Alaska, cent of their state, they no longer have authority to do management practices that they may or may not be exercising him Obama brought that in. So Obama interrupted over a hundred years of practices that just that worked. That that we have the evidence that they were sorry, not not

what the hell they become a state? Okay? So now I was wrong, not a hundred years what Okay? So the state had been an entity in and of itself. It had been a state and with a game and they had a game agency prior to statehood. But like whatever you had statehood, Alaska Department of Fishing Game comes into being. They have predator management, but they still have intact predator the completely intact menagerie of predators still occupying

the entirety of their historic landscape. But the Feds say, you can't do these things that you may or may not be doing on little chunks of land where we oversee the land designation. Obama does that. Now Trump undoes it. So Obama upset a long history of status quo and the way this was treated in the press when Trump undid it. All Trump did is Trump undid a very short thing. But how was it treated in the press.

It was like it was in the press. They treated like Trump decided one day he woke up and said, I think I think that in Alaska they should start digging wolves out of their dens in and digging bears out of their dens. I think that that's what it should be. And so he simply undid a a a prohibition that was still in its infancy, or turned it to what it was four years ago exactly. But it was treated like Trump administration decides to allow bears to be dug from their den The horror is that not

just like a classic virtue signaling. Not to use a political hot button word, but I mean, like the former administration shutting that down just because they didn't like the idea we're looking for something to grab onto that just would get a rise out of people. I mean, it's just like virtue signaling. I I'm like, maybe one of

the only few people on the planet. Um, No, there's a couple more they can be like, uh, the con sort out, you know, because like a lot of things, like, no matter what Trump did, a lot of people they're just gonna hate it mm hmm. And there's a lot of people that are just gonna love it right, they're they're pre wired, and you're one of the few people

on the planet that can sort that out navigating. I feel like I'm I feel like I have an extraordinary ability to look at record issue by issue and divorce the policy from the noise. Yeah, and all the guy did was he said the guy before me overreached. It was contentious. It was an insult to Alaska ficient game, it was an insult to the state of Alaska. They should not have done that and put it back to the way it was. But now Lo and Behold, here's

the final thing that was the backstory to this. Here we are Biden moves to end donut lures, like like the Times suddenly interested in like a specific strategy. Like they're like, like, they're gonna end donut lures. Okay, they're gonna end the placing of donuts for bait, which leave like a guy who let's say that there's a guy using dog food coded in molasses? Is he at home going? I guess I'm safe. No, they're ending donut lures. It's like the Times all of sudden becomes interested in like

the specificity of the date of the bait. Why because this sounds particularly egregious. They're not ending the use of donuts. It's baiting. Yeah, I was gonna say that, Like where does the interest in debit item come from? And why did they not say Why did they not say moves to end, burnt honeycomb moves to end. So that's not a joke, salmon carcasses, doughnut lures. The Times is focused on the use of donuts. Biden moves to end donut lures. Have you ever heard that term before? Never know what

just placing of donuts. If they had said, Biden moves to end the baiting of bears. But it's like they're like, how could that doesn't sound bad? It doesn't sound as bad as I would like. But there's something that sounds especially naughty about, don't I think? I think they're trying to like portray like just a big overweight barry, just like non on donuts, like you want to paint that picture. And then in the grasping and people's grasping of like

why should this be bad? I understand why is it bad? They point out that where's my little Ben Franklin glasses here? They point out that, um, all the so they begin so dateline Washington or you know, place line. The National Park Services moving to prohibit hunters on some public lands in Alaska from baiting black bears with donuts, just donuts, and using spotlights to shoot hybridating bears and cubs in their dens, techniques allowed by the Trump administration but considered

inhumane by conservationists. Um, and I don't, I don't And and still pinning it back somehow on Trump. Do we know for sure what the definition of doughnut is? I mean, does it have to be pastry with a whole. That's like John's our long John's in could you bait could with a donut hole? Yeah? Yeah, donut hole is the opposite of a donut. A doughnut hole is what makes a donut. It's absence makes a donut. Or think about

a Danish. Sure, my minors stay like Basically, it's like, it's like I would love to see the legislation because I beat in the legislation, there's no mention whatsoever of a donut. But to somehow do you think they're actually trying talking about specifically not baiting bears using food lures, But but they this journalist, this writer, I think, seems to think that like it just sounds especially naughty. That would be some good clickbait for his sounds unnatural and

naughty if it's a doughnut. So when you're reading this stuff, when you're reading this stuff, this is just a couple of things I would like to keep you to keep in mind that that the mentions of Trump allowing it, it had already been allowed. A Uh, let me find this quote from someone, Um, here's your No, I don't eve need his quote cause I'll just paraphrase the quote. Uh, all these articles come out about this thing. Now it's been three times. It was when Obama did it, he

was him saving the world by banning it. When Trump ruined the world by putting it back the way, it was Biden saving the world by banning it. And all these readings, you'll find that they're gonna represe. And it is though someone in Alaska feels like just adamant that they're like it's presented like Alaskans just want the right

to do the most atrocious stuff imaginable to wildlife. That they're actually just defending the use of donuts in and of itself, that they care so much about being able to place donuts and be mean to bears, that that's what they're defending. And you do not And I read all these articles. I'm a sucker for articles about the subject. No one ever takes point to clarify the contentious issue is it's not the They're not focused on the practice.

They're focused on how are you justifying usurping our rights to manage wildlife as we see fit. They're not in love with defending donuts. They're in love was saying you don't have a place, you don't have a justification and in some people's argument, you don't have the legal pathway to come in and interrupt our game management practice. And I think they can say that from a legal standpoint, as I made clear that it's like it's it's a federal overreach and it's a it's a usurpation. Is that

a word, Jason, usurpations? You know, we recently covered a word that um you know, like um uh flatulence familiar. Do you know there's a word for the actual like substance flatal? I did learn something today like the miasma is like flatal Uh? What was I talking about? Usurpation? It's a usurpation of their things and they would be just as mad if it was anything else, they would be Alaska might be just as mad if the FEDS came in and said we have decided that he let me.

Let me put this forward because this is a good this is a great way to explained this. I think let's say the FEDS came Let's say the Feds are completely different people and they came forward and said on refuge land, you can hunt moose of the drone because we hate moose. I think Alaskaa be pissed, right, they'd be pissed. Mm hmm. Why is there a hesitation not to regard that their practices are working? I mean what why?

Because is that not talked more about the abundance of game there and how the lower forty eight could be learned a thing or two? Yes, why why is that not? I don't know? Because they're using words like inhumane. They're using like even like I even object to their word of conservationists. Conservationists find it inhumane. Those aren't the those are pulled. Those two terms are pulled from completely different dictionaries.

Conservationists find it inhumane. Conservationists if you like, if you look at what a concert, how a conservation is defines there concern list. They're not concerned like I don't know conservations that are concerned with what's humane. They might be concerned with how do we preserve intact ecosystems? That would be a thing that I would agree with, But I don't think Eldo Leopold woke up in the morning wondering what's humane? He woke up in the morning wondering how

can I save wilderness? Well, I mean wolves, like I don't know. You if you want to go on YouTube and watch them harrowing ship. You should go watch grizzly bears dig black bear cubs out of their dens and eat them. Thought about it, they'll curl your hair. Uh that's I don't know, is it like, is the prep does the bear cub who's getting dug out of his den? Is he like, oh, I was nervous because I thought it was a person, But it's just a bear eating me.

I feel better about it now. Or does he think, like, my gosh, this is inhumane. I'm just a cute little bear cub. It's it's there. They're they're they're combining words that don't belong together. If they said regarded by animal welfare activists as being inhumane, I like, that's that's good reporting. That's great animal well for activists think it's inhumane, Okay,

at least paint it that way. It's so manipulative. I was talking with Jason their day about every time you read an article about something you let me rephrase this. Remember this conversation with hand. When you're reading articles about stuff you have no idea about, you're thankful for the article. You're like, oh, that's cool. I didn't understand any of that. Now,

I understand it pretty good, thank you. But every time you read an article about something that you know well, you're pissed about how it was presented, which then makes you wonder what you just got wrong? But you didn't know enough to know all the ways it was whacked out, to which Jason said, I've observed that before and wanted to say, so, who who were the forces? Who are the interests that we're lobbying for this band in this legislation.

My guess is it is animal welfare activists pressuring the administration and they have it's a be in their bonnet, and it's been to be in their bonnet since the Obama administration, and they are saying whatever through through however, uh whatever, perfectly acceptable practices happen in American politics where you back a campaign, you're back it financially, you back it with your followers, and then a while later you go and say, hey, remember how you know there's we

got a real problem. Uh. We saw it happen with with Murphy, the governor of New Jersey. He ran under like he would actually talk about it. He ran a campaign and one of the planks in his platform was ending the bear hunt in New Jersey? Was that coming from his mind? I can't accept that it was. It was someone, And I'm not saying that these deals are bad, because these deals happen in our favor all the time. Like I'm on a board, I'm on a I'm a board member of TRCP. We don't like, you don't know

when uses the term like they're proud of it. But TRCP lobbies at a federal level for conservation, So I get it. You know, you send your emissaries to politicians and you're like, here's the thing that burns my ass, and then you hope that they serve your bidding. But I don't think when when Biden, um, you know it is out checking on his camaro and his classified documents

in his garage, I don't think. I don't think that he's like, man, you know what burns my ass is the bear digging in the laud someone like planted it. Put it, planted it in there mind. And the only place they can possibly pull it off is on refuge land. So the the bigger intent may have been too band bear hunting altogether, but they can't do that. But this policy was a scrap to throw. Sure as sure, let me say something about baiting bears. Just this is off

the real topic you're talking to. Baiting bears allowed. Well, first of all, anywhere that you can bait bears, it is a management tool by the agency to take out the number of bears they need to in that region. Like heavily forested regions, you can't spot in stock bears and effectively kill them. So it's a management tool. Number one. Number two, it allows for selective harvest, like we can target,

and generally people do this. Generally bear hunters would be they would put up a bear bait, they would have they would know what bears were coming in, and they would select for older mature males to take out. The least selective hunting that Clay Newcomb does for bears is spotting stock hunting, which would be going to some state glassing up a bear on the hillside. You've been hunting for three days and you've seen two bears, and you go shoot that bear and and then you got a

ground check them. That's right, and so baiting is actually a very high quality management tool for bear managers. For instance, in the state of Arkansas twenty two years ago, they decided we're going to manage our bears by using bow hunters over bait on private land, like very thought out, very strategic, and they have a quota, and so man baiting bears. Don't let anybody Jason Phelps tell you that it ain't cool, because it's cool. It's a great way

to manage bears. And but it's so like this is the way I describe it is that in one sentence you can can you could relay a story of Hey, these crazy rednecks want to put out donuts and kill bears, and you if you have no context, no historic context, you don't live in bear country, that equates too bad. It's about a three or four step conversation for you

to understand why it's actually really good. Like we have expanding black bears are doing better than almost any other big game on the continent every yea, every population of bears on this black bears are expanding, and we're not getting any more wilderness. We're not increasing the amount of habitat, we're decreasing it by you know, encroachment of civilization, habitat, fragmentation, all this stuff. And so if there was ever a time in North America for there a need for really

strategic bear management. It's now and then these folks come in thinking that they're doing something good and are actually getting it completely wrong, and so it's it's yeah, it's just one of these things that's just backwards. But it takes it would take somebody listening to you for more than one sentence to be like, oh, I get it. Here. Here's a full page ad that was just taken out in the Seattle Times. A friend of mine sent it to me. Full page ad. It's from an organization called

Washington Washington Wildlife First dot org. Full page ad. It's a picture of a wolf. The main text is Washington wildlife management is much scary year than the big bad wolf. Ask Governor j Insley to make Washington safer for wildlife. And they go on to say fish and wildlife policy has been set by two people who hunt. Now the governor is making three appointments to the Fish and Wildlife

Commission that could transform Washington wildlife management. Please join us and asking for commissioners who will prioritize conservation over consumption and be a voice for the values and interests of all Washingtonians. So what you're having here is they want to have wildlife commission's inners that are like a zookeeper, a wild they've commissioner that's an animal rights activist in management.

At the top of the page there's text, there's like the the atrocities beavers are trapped and drowned for their for one, let me tell you one thing. Beavers are not viewers are not hunted. So it's they're they're regulated as a fur bear with like very tight restrictions and very tight gear restrictions. Okay, but you don't hunt for him. That's the only way they're done. Uh. Cougars are hounded and shot out of trees. Wolves are slaughtered for the livestock industry. It's it's just a it's a it's a

wildly different worldview. And when you get into wildlife management, like you have to become a believer in the slippery slope because the conversations that are happening out of your view. The conversations is we would like to see an end, absolutely, we would like to see an end of consumptive use of wildlife across the board. How do you do that? Death by a thousand cuts, because you can still go, you can still go to Americans and pull Americans and

say do you believe in regulated hunting? Do you support regulated hunting and fishing? Overwhelmingly higher now than it wasn't the eighties. We'll say yes. The minute you put particulars to it, the number goes down. The minute you put particulars to it. You could go and do a pole. I haven't seen this one necessarily, but you could go do a pole and say, um, do you do support regulated hunting and regulated hunting fishing? Yep? Do you support the practice of having a dog chase a birden flush

it so that amand can slaughter with a shotgun? Well? No, not that. Would you support someone sitting on the edge of a field so that when a deer comes out to get its first little bite of food in the evening, a man you know, like, oh no, that sounds So what does that tell you though? Does that tell you that?

So if if people who have no understanding of hunting arts and support of it, then that that means that Okay, if you're in support of it, then let then let the people who actually know what's going on, know what it takes to manage wildlife, know what it takes to manage to land have control of of making rules and regulations. I mean, like, what's the point of what? What's your

takeaway from what you're saying about. There's overwhelming support of it until you get to the granular stuff that when you go after it, it's easy to go out when you when you go after it, you go after the lowest hanging fruit and the thing that sounds more atrocious because you're not going to be able to go after the thing in and of itself. Washington eventually, will California

eventually will California is based there. I had a very high years ago, I had a very high level person at California Fishing Game predicted me that they would lose the whole thing in twenty five years. He thought it was gonna be archery, next the whole thing, eventually the whole he said from where he was sitting that day, said, I think we'll lose the whole thing into only five years. Archer will be the next thing we lose. Then it will be a thing about, you know, the maiming of

or humanity of it. There's there there's a justifiable there's there's a position when it comes to these debates that that I think that very intelligent, well meaning people put this idea forth that hunters need to aggressively police their own actions to make it that there is no low hanging fruit, that we would self eliminate all the low hanging fruit. That you'd say, Okay, I'm gonna quit hound hunting because that gives us all a black eye. Okay, um,

I'm gonna quit. You should quit baiting because that gives us all a black eye. And they think that you would clean it up so much that an animal rights person would look and say to themselves, well, now the they've made themselves as peers, the driven snow, and I have no more desire to mess with them, because I really was just interested in trapping. Um. There are people that think that that's that that that's the approach that you should be. That you should never um display talk

about anything. If you take a picture of a you and a deer you killed, you should look really sad. That you should never have bloody hands, You should never drive with a with a deer in the back of your truck that someone might see. You should never do any practice that might irritate animal rights activists, and that then we'll live in perpetuity for the rest of our lives. That's like I I regard it as a like, uh,

it's not it's not a nonsensical position. I just think that I've come to think more and more that that's wrong and stupid. Yeah, there after the low hanging fruit because it's but as soon as that's gone, the next level they're never going to go away. You know. It feels like it's really it's an issue of identity, like in a real big macro scale. It's like who are we as really even as Americans? And it's like, this is who we are, and this is our track record

with wildlife. We have the most abundant big game wildlife conservation practices in the history of the planet. Our our success has been so good here and this is who we are. This we're hunters, we eat meat, We deeply value culturally these animals. And it's like they're trying to take that away from us because they don't understand it. There's a there's a viewpoint I have that that I

almost shouldn't make. Is gonna just in the in the in being um just in the spirit of honesty on my good there's an argument like in the abortion debate. There's in the in the abortion debate, there's an argument like like hands off, like hands off my body, right, Like don't tell me what to do with myself. Okay, it's one of the leading arguments to be like it's it's like when it comes to contraception, when it comes to abortion, there's there's an an argument that people make

that that's me and that's my business. And it's sort of like it's like ending the argument. You're trying to end the argument was saying like it's me, don't tell me what to do because like I live in America, and I have uh self agency to make certain decisions, and these are my innatible rights and and that's the end of it. I'm not here to like hash this out with you for a long time. Right, it's a

way of handling it. I sometimes I feel that that a little bit, like I feel that there is a legacy, there's a legacy of hunting and fishing and interaction with while life in America that has made it in some respects the philosophical um the spiritual property of a discipline

in the lifestyle. I mean, there's a discipline in the lifestyle that has a established a sense of ownership over a renewable resource, and and in all fairness, to have someone who doesn't interact with the wildlife, who doesn't understand it well, who views it only as a thing that they watch on television or that they see out of

their window when they drive through Yellowstone once in their life. Like, I feel like their imposition on this whole thing that that they're an intruder into a world that they don't understand. And it would be like these two different things. If you're gonna like there, there's two different viewpoints take take it. In voting, some people think that just your mere presence in America gives you the right to vote here legally or not. Your mere presence in America should allow you

to cast a ballot. There's other people that think that will know. I think that you should be a citizen. I think that you should not be a felon. I think that you should have a address by which I can identify that you are who you say you are, and that under those conditions you should be able to

pick the leaders of the country. Two different worldviews, Like when when it comes to fish and wildlife, I'm more like, instinctively I'm more like the person who would want you to have to jump through more hurdles and understand what you're talking about and know the history before you weigh in on ship. M hm. But it doesn't really work

that way. Well, going back to the Washington Commissioners thing, Jason was telling us about how there's this idea that the commissioners, the people that are making wildlife based decisions, would be outside of the historic genre of people that we pick, like like, you know, let's put an animal rights activist on the game commission just so that we have this diverse spread of people. You could do that, but that's not the way we've done it. And what

we've done has been highly successful. So I think that's the statement that you're making is like, yeah, we could like totally change the way that we're doing this, but if you want to do something that's predictable and stable that has worked in general, and and and and some people have bones to pick with their wildlife agency, which is kind of I mean, yeah, whatever, but in general, macro squad macro scale wildlife management and this continent has

been phenomenal, Like since the Garden of Eden, it hadn't been this good and so I think what we're saying is that, yeah, you could do it that way, that's way different and what we've done has worked extremely well. And you know, typically guys that are on commissions that are making decisions, or people that are historically culturally vested in wildlife from a hunter manager, you know position. I think that Jason was talking about this the dr and night,

and you should make your own point about it. But there's this idea. You live in Washington, there's an idea that you're gonna throw out a desire to throw out a very effective system as measured by how successful it's been, um and replace it with not quite sure. Yeah, I mean being from Washington and kind of seeing what's happening. Um. You know, most of North American's big game is managed

by the North American model of wildlife. And one of our commissioners might not be quoted perfectly, but to this sense, it no longer works because it does. It no longer has an emotional or social um emphasis there. There's no way to now categorize and balance that with the the idea of how do we manage the wild life? We need to look at now the the social impact that these seasons these you know, quotas, whatever they may be, and then we also need to look at the social um.

So it's emotional and social components are not included in that model. Therefore we just need to undo everything. But they don't have a model to replace it with. So now it's like they've now used this no model to go to that that just remove spring bear season. So it's just it's just low hanging fruit instantly being taken off. And these I don't this might be a point that's a little bit outside, but these people are so uneducated

on our hunting seasons. You know, we we just went through this whole um spring bear ondoing that we've had forever. One of the new commissioners, I don't know which one it was, I thought at the same time, we should take out spring wild turkey seasons because if a spring bearer comes out of his den lethargic and is more vulnerable than by all means of spring turkey had to

be And that's that's what we're dealing with. Like we're to the point where these people have no understanding on why seasons are set when they're set, and why we pursume at certain times. And you're just to the point of just in that article alludes to it like they're gonna replace three commissioners because some of our UM commissioners that did have fishing and hunting backgrounds were so frustrated

with some of the recent stuff. They've all resigned and it's like, well, now we're going to go from you know, what was kind of a mixed board to just a lopsided Um. Yeah, you guys, E want to like Pamela Anderson on your commission. It's not gonna be good. Uh, but I'll take the task. Even what he said about the he probably doesn't know anything about the North American model of while the conservation because him saying that there's no social and cultural component. It's made up of seven tenants.

One of the tenants is democratic allocation. That feels pretty cultural and social to me, Democratic allocation of resources, a waste component. There's a tenant about waste non frivolous use. There's a tenant about international cooperation that all feels very cultural and social to me. It's it's it's it's like he he's a technic thing he doesn't understand. Yeah, hey,

what's the what's the response for for hunters? To this, Steve, Like, so what we're talking about, We're we're talking about these big things that are going on not totally outside of our control. But what's the message to the hunting community? You know, my mind remains unchanged. Um, the two party system, it's kind of miserable for hunters. Uh. There needs we need, like a new one that's pro hunting and pro habitat.

You're talking you gotta strategically shop. You get culture, you get hunting defense and cultural defense from the right, and a lot of times you get pretty good environmental habitat stuff from the left, and there's nowhere to turn. It's

just like it's like who do you feel like? You know, it's it's who at any given moment is less likely to screw you mm hmm, And to be honest with you, like right now, like with cultural stuff going on, like the right right now is a lot of elements of the right right now are less likely to screw you. Mm hmm. It's like becoming such a clown car mm hmm. I would with some of the stuff, like like you know, I remember Insley got in and he was one of the first, Like I said, he's like one of the

first guys to bail on the deal. But in my head I already knew, like with already knew with like certain wildlife issues. I was like, man, not the guy for me. Yeah, extreme, but probably has a great habitat record, I guarantee it. He Yeah, like the amount of tax just to save some you know, the orcas, and it's it's nuts. Like I mean, it's it's a good it's a good idea, but it's just like the at the expense of of you know, Washington citizens. He's I would

consider extreme. Like you know, I think, what is it a National Wild Turkey Federation. Isn't it defend the habitat, defend the hunt. Isn't that they're like part of their slogan taglines, do that, I'll send n WTF a bunch of money. It's like here, here's what I was is gonna say at a at a more granular? Can I answer one more time? Because I just thought have a better one, not better, not better than defend the habitat,

defend the hunt. Think about what's built into t RCPs thing guaranteeing Americans quality places to what hunt fish, hunting fish. So I shouldn't say like I'm the one that's gotta figured out a lot of people gotta figured out. Defend the habitat, defend the hunt guarantee Americans quality places, not shipped up places, quality places to hunt fish. So the the public sector is all over this. Aspects of the public are sorry. Aspects of the NGO, you know, the

NGO private sector is all over this. But in the in the political atmosphere, it's like you're always someone's always screwing you and in some respects always helping you out. Some people are always helping you out on somethingunn you happen to help a finger. Let me let me say this because this is I wanted to hear what you had to say about that, and that was like a like a I would say a big macro like call

to action for people and give them some understanding. If we were to have a family meeting as hunters, if we were all like, okay, boys, come inside, everybody's sent the couch. We gotta have a little talk, I would say what we need to do is we've got to Maybe this is overdone, but I think there's things that I can do that would in my own life that would help me be better. But we really have to unify.

And that's an overly stated word, but what that means is when you tell your kid how dumb crossbow hunters are, you are? No, I pointed Steve when I said, Bridget, when you tell your something, no, when you there's things that we do all the time that infuse division inside of people that are really on our team, Like and I've experienced that massively inside of when I ran Bear Hunting magazine. I mean it was like just baiting bears

and all this controversial stuff. All I'm saying is, if there's somebody that does something different than you, because I gave ron t you you do stuff different in Montana than I do in Arkansas. And the way I view hunting is different than the guys out west. You're treading into dangerous territory right now, we're going do you think, so, oh yeah, you are? Well, I I just I'm just saying,

don't we're so divided amongst ourselves. Like I'm okay with the way that Jason hunts, and if it's inside the laws and the and the boundaries of legality where I live, and I can run run bears with hounds, and I can trap, and I can you know, shoot squirrels to the end of February and then like just be okay with that, Just be like, good job, Clay. You go, here's where, Here's where you're you're here's where you're you're

you're playing checkers when you should be playing chess. Game managers, even if there was no radical animal rights agenda whatsoever in this country, game managers would still need to wrestle with emerging technologies you have. You would agree that wildlife is a finite resource, okay, right, wilde a finite resource. You want to maximize people's you want to maximize your populations opportunity to try to get a share a portion

of this finite resource. In order to maximize participation and opportunity, you need to do things that control efficacy rights. Just I know where you're going with this. Well, let's say people don't. Let's say you have five years from now. Let's say you have a population of you have a mountain range, and and you're you're very well intentioned game mant pro hunting game managers are like, we can pull a hundred elk off that mountain, no problem, hunterd elk

off that mountain. There's a let's say I'm I'm using not real numbers, but there's a thousand elk on that mountain. Okay, that mountain has historically had about a thousand elk on. It can hold about a thousand elk. Um, we can kill a hundred in the fall, and you know what, You're gonna have a thousand elk on that mountain again next year. That's just how it goes. You could kill none and you're gonna have a thousand elk on that mountain. You could kill a hundred and you're gonna have a

thousand elk on that mountain. Because that mountain is gonna hold about a thousand elk, it gets much more. They tend to they tend to starve off, it gets much more. Predation shoots through the roof whatever. It's always got about a thousand. We're gonna kill a hundred. Now we could say, okay, we're gonna let we're gonna kill a hundred. You can use a helicopter, you can use thermal, you can use night vision explosives. Okay, how many tags are you going

to give out? Hundred tags? Probably because everybody's going to get the elk. Or you say, here's what we're gonna do instead, you can use a bow, you can't hunt at night. How many tags are we going to give out a thousand to kill a hundred? No, you know what you're gonna give out is you're gonna have success rates, so you can give out five hundred tags. That is why, like, you know, deeper into the weeds than what you're proposing

that you're proposing of. You're you're tiptoeing around, proposing a philosophy in which everything is great and cool. And just because I hunt out of a helicopter with night vision, I think I think he's taken the extreme of what I was even you tiptoed into dangerous territory. This is all I was saying, was like, don't hate a guy because he uses hounds. It's just like historic use practice. Just be okay with it. You don't have to kill a mountain lion over hounds, but that's the way we

do it. If you're not defending your point's well taken up. But you can even shoot holes in my point. Here's unification, Steve, We're on the same side, bro the cross bowl thing kind of because here's the deal. When you get an individual I'll argue policy a crossbows. Well, I'm not saying that in Montana. Yeah, right now, archery season in Montana, the state where I love archery season Montana, you can't ult with a cross bowl. However, crossbow hunters be like,

why are you discriminated against us? We count No, you can hunt with a cross bowl. You can hunt with a cross bowl more than you can't. You can hunt with a crossbow all through spring bear season, no problem, six weeks of general firearm you can hunt with a crossbow. Don't say you can't hunt with a crossbow. You can't hunt with a crossbow during archery season, just as I can't hunt with a gun during archery season. I would never come and say there's no chance to hunt with

a gun. They would be like, well, no, sir, there's a lot of chances to hunt with a gun. You hunt with a gun all through spring bear season, you know, with a gonna all through general firearm season. You can hunt with a gun all through the extended seasons. But you can't hunt with a gun during archery season. A crossbow you can have had it, you know, hut your ass off with a crossbow. You just want to do it.

The one time you can't who doesn't If you want to ask any individual, be like, would do you do you think it should be cool? Like should we let you hunt with your gun during archery? I'd be like, you mean, just me sure, I think that's a I think that'd be a phenomenal idea. Yeah, great point. But here's where my point falls apart. Just in all fairness, I think that management agencies need to protect traditional use practices.

Someone might say why would Someone might point and be like, one of the oldest strategies that we know was occurring on this continent. Two old strategies were the buffalo jump and fire. You would light ship on fire and kill the stuff that ran out. So if you want to defend traditional use practices, are you saying that hunters should have uh carte block to go and burn thickets to flush out game. So it all gets a little complicated.

In traditional use, you have to like draw line in the sand, like on this day in nine seven is you know, it's like you couldn't you can, I mean go back as far as you can, and then with the you know, with things improving, it's like traditional use, where do you draw the line a cree beaver hunting strategy was that you just remove the damn, drain the whole pond out, and then go around to all the dens and stuff and dig them out and club the beavers.

In most dates now, especially states that have a deep tradition of contemporary fur trapping, you can't destroy the damn because you're chopping down the apple tree. You want people, if you want people to be able to pick the apples, don't cut the damn tree down. So all this stuff is a little tricky. Speaking, which the second thing I wanted to cover. It was a great intro. That's a great intro to the podcast. Welcome to the met Eater podcast.

I was on I was hacking on Michigan because our our our friend and Zuck I wasn't hacking on Michigan. Our friend of Michigan. Guys are Matt's personal MAT's personal friend. That's how I know guys are Matt Cook's friend. Was sent me a note. Uh he was very concerned about the fall turkey hunt in Michigan and I had spent

some time. I didn't criticize the state. I said I would love to hear the justification for why they're there having it be that that one guy can in in in a certain area in Michigan, that you could that you could buy tag after tag after tag in the fall and kill turkeys and now that but shoot hands. Okay, basically got areas where you can just keep buying them till they're you know, and some guy he knows guy killed five gobblers off public way and fall turkey hunt.

And I was saying, I will say not that it was wrong. I was saying, I think that people need to be cautious with turkeys. And I think that if you're gonna look and be like like and and let me back up once, like a guy wrote in all bent out of shape, like, how can you support the shooting at does and fawns but you don't support the shooting at hands. That's not my gripe. My gripe, isn't that?

My statement was simply that that as we're as we know from Missouri, as we know from Kentucky, as we know from South Carolina, you can't take turkeys for granted, talk about what's going on when you're at Yeah, in Arkansas, we've lost in the last ten to fifteen years, we've

lost sixty of our population. So when I was in high school, you know, twenty years old, you know, twenty years ago, we had a pretty great turkey hunting and today it is Arkansas turkey hunting is very, very difficult, and it's uh, it's death by a thousand cuts in terms of why turkey populations are declining. But it's happening all over the South, the Southeast, and there's guys that are, you know, dedicating their careers to try and understand why.

But they're just a you know, a ground nesting bird man. You can't can't put your faith in him because they're extremely vulnerable. Yeah, ground clad said one has never falling love with the ground nesting learning that from my grandpa, who was a who was a quail hunter. For really it's kind of a joke, but my grandfather was a

big time bird dog trainer, Bob White quail man. In the last twenty years of his life that I spent with him, he bemoaned the passing of the Bob White quail I mean we went quail hunting literally knowing we weren't gonna find quail, but he just wanted to work as dogs and we wanted to go through the motions, and so I quail hunted my whole youth, like basically knowing we were after something that for the most part

didn't exist. And his stories of man Clay at one time found nine covees on that single hill right there, and today there's none. And so you know that kind of stuf. Then you go and say, well, why is that? And the answer is where do I begin? Right? Fire ants changing at your cultural practices, um changing the fire management practices, cheat, grass invade. You know, it's like all that ship even if you removed one and probably still be happening. But with turkeys, you have like there's this

thing with there's this phenomenon like the founder effect. I shouldn't call a phennen because it might be a sort of like a somewhat of a scientific principle. The founder effect. When you bring it, when you introduce a new species on a landscape, it kicks ass for a couple of reasons. They're exploiting. They're exploiting a resource base that hasn't been touched, so they're gonna like fill a niche, and the niche hasn't been manipulated, had have been Uh, it hasn't been occupied,

but it hasn't been exploited at all. Okay, So let's say you were to go to some landscape that had never had you, some prey rich landscape that had never had a coyote on it, and you're like, it just mages. Some magical island full of rabbits and ground nesting birds, never had a kyote on it. You dumped some kyote flues on it. What do you imagine is gonna happen? Booming popular shiploads of food. The rabbits have never seen it before, and they're like, hey, what's that? And it

gets eaten. UM ship that eats coyotes hasn't figured out how to exploit, just as the rabbits haven't figured out how to um prevent themselves from They haven't learned to like, not lay out in the open at night, because they've never needed to worry about laying out in the open at night. But now they've got to realize, Man, you can't lay out in the open at night anymore, that's for sure. And something that might be like a kyot would be good to eat. He hasn't figured out how

to deal with them yet. Maybe it's kind of hard to kill. But if we put our heads to get will figure out how to kill Kyles and we'll eat him. But they haven't figured that out yet. So here the coyotes are eating tons of rabbits, tons of ground nesting birds, having tons of babies. Nothing's killing their babies, and you'd be like, man, this is the Kyle hunting paradise. Fast forward twenty years. They've clipped, they've pulled off the cream

of the crop of the rabbits. Rabbits have gotten very paranoid. They conduct their daily existence very differently. Some other big bad thing has been like you know, uh, I figured out that I can go out to that place and killed shipload of kyotes and I like to eat coyotes, right and over time, it's not that way turkeys were reintroduced, but it's like they were so eliminated from the landscape.

The turkeys when they were reintroduced, they had a new founder effect and everybody, like every state that went through it had the same thing, like my dad, Like they happened in Michigan right when I moved out of Michigan. I left Michigan and I finished school and left Michigan, and my dad started just slain in turkeys he didn't even need to do anything mhm right, And it was just this came in and they were they were clueless, exploding in numbers, and everybody got to be like, this

is just how it is now. We have shiploads of turkeys all the time, kill them all. And my my only thing with that stuff is like I would be cautious. M I would be cautious. And when they when Michigan, the representative from Michigan Fishing Game responded, and they're viewing it like they're viewing these high take areas, they're viewing it as population control. And then you'd be like, well, who the hell is saying there's too many agricultural interests?

Not me. I've never had a turkey hunter bitch to me about too many turkeys. Ever, So when someone says turkeys are overpopulated, I'm like, by whose measure? Not mine? Yeah, so just be careful. That's mostly take on him, and it's it's like, it's not immoral, it's just like be careful.

It's really interesting because when you have these big booms of of well, particularly with turkeys the seventies, eighties, and nineties, there's a thirty year period which is a pretty long period and a human lifespan, enough time to really build a norm and build culture. That's when all the call companies rose up, Like there were no big major like turkey call companies and turkey call accessories, and in the nineties those things really peaked and kind of and that's

when turkey hunting media started. And so it was kind of like there was a flag stuck in the ground in the nineties in America about turkey hunting culture, and then that became the norm. And then today we're like, dad gum, why can't it be like the nineties. And that's also when there was some great turkey poachers that arose,

like Charlie and Louis del Edwards. Clay gets into this in a series of bear Greese podcasts and you should you should expand them this a little bit and in a series of bear Grease podcasts about turkey poachers, a bunch of different turkey poachers and that these guys are they call it preseason honey, Yeah, guys that are killing twenty five turkeys, fifty turkeys, seventy five turkeys because turkeys

are everywhere. Yeah, they you know, if you're season bag limits too, and you have you're in a place with a ton of turkeys. I mean for people with with without the the the backing to want to obey the law. I mean, killing two turkeys just wasn't enough. And these guys hunted from the time they started goblin til the time they stopped. You know, get it when it's getting good.

Another piece of feedback that came from the Michigan Michigan's you know, the State of Michigan's Fishing Game Department, is this trend that I first heard about from Robert Abernathy, who's a turkey researcher in South Carolina, and it's that and looking at how are we going to continue to hunt turkeys and continue to have a lot of turkeys. You may in your state see a shift away from killing turkeys early. We sometimes they're killing turkeys in the

snow in spring season. It's because hunters want to hunt them when they're goblin. They want to hunt turkeys when when you make a call, they're coming. And there's a lot of emerging should say a lot, there's some emerging research and emerging suspicion that when you're killing gobblers pre nesting, you're you're damaging a you're you're damaging the social hierarchy,

and and and and interfering with breeding. And then it's like kill all the gobblers you want, and may don't kill them so bad in April you're busting them up at the wrong time. And and then there's also a fear that when you're hunting these winnering flocks and stuff like pre nesting, that you're you're having a lot of uh, you're having a lot of collateral damage by running shotgun, by running shot come patterns into in the groups of turkeys rather than working individual birds later on in the

later on in the cycle. Mhm. Groundness and birds are just extremely complex. I think that's what we're learning. Yeah, I know, when I interviewed Mike Chamberlain, it's like the list of uh, you know, what's affecting you know, a

lot of it. You talked early which a lot of states have their youth season and they talk about easy now I know, I know, but like I think there was a study a study down in Missouri were like, uh, you know, it's not a huge percentage of the overall birds, but they equate like that of the birds that get killed has like just as much of effect as the other you know of the birds that get killed and so, but it's not he was quick, you know, Mike was

quick to say, it's not just youth seasons, it's habitat, it's this, it's this. It's just a very and and on a on an animal that has, you know, on a max of four year life cycling and then get older than that. But if we just say four years is kind of then the road for a turkey, you know, living through three with something with that quick at turnaround. You know, it's a slippery slope of Michigan. It's just very the populations like clay it's at, can shift very

very quickly. When you're only dealing with a three or four years. You know, you get one or two bad springs and you're down to thirty three percent of your birds. If we're going on and it's just a very very complex issue. I don't think we have figured out yet. There's another aspect of turkey season. And I was like,

I enjoy youth turkey season. Um, and it gets into that kind of like not in my backyard, like don't mess with me right, Like I'm I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth on one hand saying there's a lot of respected turkey researchers are like, we got caught stock killing birds so early. And then I'm like, you know, I'm already playing. I'm already playing in the Wisconsin. You know. We we go to Wisconsin for youth turkey. It's my favorite time of year. Last year we killed

zero turkeys. Um, but that was not our intent, right, Our intent was to get a couple. So I love it. I love it. And yeah, maybe you know there will be a time when you have to, you know, question that and make that sacrifice. But generally, what you're looking for is you're not looking for You're looking for not individuals uh making like self proclamations. You're you're looking for agencies to codify regulations right and and basically have that be you know, people be like, how do you be

how do you become an ethical hunter? But here's of it. Follow the law. We'll get you pretty much all the way there. Follow the law. Um in the law right now is you know the youth turkey thing. And and I don't I don't have I'm not hacking on any guy that goes out in Michigan and the fall and you know, the only the only have they got way less than half as many tagholders in the fall, in a way lower success rate in the fall. They they

view it as like it's like a negligible harvest. But I don't know, Man, the good days of turkey you know, I hate say it, but in some respects the good days of turkey hunting could be winding down. Would you be as cautious about going to two birds? You know, tag for two birds limit versus one before you would you know, open up the fall like in Michigan even

one bird limit? Would you would you rather see them going to two birds and not do the full If I was the TSAR, if I was America's wildlifs Are, that'd be a good position for that would be You're the only one in this country that can sort through bipartisan politics America's wildlifs are, And I could just do what I needed to do and I would even have to hear any complaints. Right, there's no way to even get a hold of me. And I'm the wildlifs Are and no one even knows that I'm the wild LIFs Are.

You're the man behind the curtain. I'm the man behind the curtain and I can do stuff and I don't need to hear about it from my friends. No one would know I did it, but it would be done. In that scenario, I would be like, I would go to my Turkey guys and I'd be like, Okay, what are we looking at? All the states, all the game management units, like very detailed level, what are we looking at? Give me the harvest numbers that we can withstand. I would say, great, let's shoot for that in the spring.

There's a lot of other stuff to do in the fall. Let's make let's make a big robust spring season. If we need to cut out April a bit, if we need to eat into April, let's give it back twice folding may Well, that's what that would probably be my my edict. As turkeys are, that's what they're doing a lot in a set like in Arkansas, that's what they're doing. They've bumped our season dates back to the late teens of April usually, and man, by then it's it's pretty tough.

And I used to it opened like the first Saturday in April, you know, when I as a kid. So yeah, they're doing that. Let me tell you who let me tell you a Turkey guy that you need to have on this podcast. And I'm gonna be so bold as to do this on the air. Number. Here's the thing, you might be doing yourself a disservice because if you do that and then he winds up on all kinds of other podcasts, then it won't be as fun for

me to have him on this podcast. Got you well, I'll tell you there's a Okay, I'll tell you everything, but the guy's name. There's a guy in Tennessee that you really should have on the Medeor podcast. Great guy, he's he's he's got a little different angle than some of the some of the other the turkey apologists that we've had floating around. I view myself when it comes to Turkey stuff like I'm not making this stuff up.

I view myself as basically like I view myself basically as a UM A person who listens to Mike Chamberlain. I mean, Mike Chairman told me something like crazy, I probably wouldn't. I mean, like generally, it's like I don't you know we talked about earlier, like what's the motivation? Guy loves turkey hunting, dedicated his life's turkeys, loves turkey hunting. He doesn't want to see turkey hunting go away. I'm like, I agree. Like that guy, Robert Abernathy, dude lives the

hunt turkeys. He's a turkey researcher. I know that his heart is pure. And I'm like, if that guy likes the hunt turkeys as much or more as I do like the hunt turkeys. Guy lives on hunt turkeys. And when he's talking, he's talking about how we're gonna keep hunting turkeys. That's the guy I want to listen to, no doubt. Uh, I'll tell you, I don't know if I'm supposed to say that this happened to helfle Finger,

but super funny. Huffle Finger used to be a dear guide and um, he's guiding on a place in Texas. So it's a ranch owned by a ranch owner and they did guided hunts on it. And half a Finger has a client who's a guy in ecologist and he rattles in the big bart for the guy, and the guy that owns the property comes and suggests that affle Finger, because this client suggests a Hefflefinger, that perhaps helfle Finger's wife should start seeing this gentleman. He's got like, I

gonna leave that up to her. M hm, that's the funniest story. He's like, yeah, yeah, the pass on that suggestion. Oh how did that story come up? I'm he emailed about a broader suite of things, but then just threw that in there as a little tibit. The greatest emails. He'll know, he'll tell you something and then but there's like four other things that like he was because we were he was we were talking about exotics and Texas, and he was introducing me to a word I hadn't heard,

which is texotics, the exotics industry of Texas. So he had some comments about texotics um, which leaves me Another thing I want to talk about is in New Mexico, cops responded to a shooting and while they're like responding to a shooting, another shooting, like an adjacent trailer happens, like another shot is fired. They find a blood trail from a person, track the blood trail into another building. And what's in that building a Bengal tiger a pet.

So did the Bengal tiger have anything to do with the crime. No, he's just an innocent bystander. Okay, okay, but they hauled it away. Oh they weren't supposed to have it in there. No, they had a Bengal tiger in a dog box. Wow. Wow. I think about that. It reminds me of the story you told about the guy in Vietnam. Oh yeah, I feel like it's sad a story I tell. It's just interesting about dog ownership. Um, all right, so Jason, do you might know you know

how to talk at all? Jason's like the interesting man in the room from Matt, I mean, aside from Matt and everybody else. Well, Jason got his second big game animal. Do you mind just giving giving listeners sort of a high level you know? Uh? Um, we're hunting Cou's deer like a high level newcomers you know. Uh, yelp review if you will of Cou's your hunting. I learned a lot over the course of the last six seven days

down here in Mexico. Um. Really grateful to you, Steve, Clay, Jason, Bridget the whole Meet Eater team for having me join you guys, at the risk of disgracing the entire pursuit of hunting. I hope that I did not do that. No, no, it was great. But with you know, with a mentorship of Steve and Clay, I gain a lot, certainly in appreciation of the the patients, the athleticism, the endurance of a cou'se deer hunt, the strategy that's required to to

get it right, to get success. Uh. I learned what to do and what not to do at a Mexican border crossing. Very valuable, life less great cross greater length here. Um. I learned that there's a healthy debate around the origin

of the term refried beans. So some would contend that refried beans is very literal in that the beans are being fried again and again and again and again, whereas others would say that there's just one Uh, there's one one fry, one pot to which beans are just continuously added, like an infinite bottle of refried beans. I don't know where I sort out on that yet. Um that to the Google that I feel is knowable. Were we to have Internet access, but yeah, yeah, no internet access. I

learned that I like not having internet access. It makes mysteries linger a little longer. Yeah. Uh. I learned that after seven consecutive days wearing the same pair of first Light long underwear, they do not smell. And then overall, my suite of first light gear uh is is durable and comfortable and highly recommendable. Oh that's great, thank you. Uh, but it's been uh it's been a great time, been a great experience. You learned how to take a very

quick showery very quick. Yeah, yeah, twenty seconds is really all that. It takes it out. Yeah, get freshened up. What was your impression of, um, the amount of that that the primary thing you do is looking through binoculars. Well that gets to the patients. Yeah, um yeah, it's uh, it's it's real acquired skill. I mean, these these these coups, they're they're hard to find. But you got I felt you got good at it. Over a couple of days, I got better at it. I got better at it. Yeah. Yeah.

That that's fun to watch, is and I know it will happen. Is. I know the people on the first day be useless and that, let me say, a couple of days later, a couple of days later, they're all sudden spotting stuff. It's fun. It's like a very quick you learned the basics pretty quickly. Steve's favorite day of the coup's hunt is the first night after he takes new people, because he's like, man, I was out there and it was like I didn't even have any help at all. Man, I was spotting all of there, and

I don't even know what Clay and Jason did. Steve all of a sudden became southern. And then and then the next day it's like, how did y'all do? It's like, oh, we probably spot as many as Steve, and he's like, oh, I knew they'd come around. Well, it's after that first day when you are able to discern the certing, the difference between a cow and a deer, that things really

take off, you know. So that came a long way. Anybody, Oh, you know, one more thing I want to touch on, and then I want to I also want to thank I want to thank Jay Scott, Jay Scott Outdoors, Um Colburn and Scott Outfitters and Jay Scott. Uh put so much work into has put decades of work into having built a UM not only a guided but to do it yourself. COO's to your hunt in Mexico. You can work with him too, to do and we've done it many many times now. UM, if you really want to

learn it. Go with Jay, you'll learn. I still look forward to that day. I haven't done it yet, but look forward today of like actually hunting with with Jay and and learning everything he knows. If you really want to learn that, you can go with j But also j Um helps facilitate do it yourself stuff where he he gets you hooked up with the information you need and everything, and and you kind of get cut loose on him, you know, cut loose on your own chunk or ground hunt and it's it's a it's a blast,

and always thankful for him for putting that together. Um undertaking. Yeah, he does such a good job with very well organized but uh, one thing I want to cover off on is is the saga of Jason's buck, which died not by his hand, so we're already calling it Jason's bud. Let's just be clear, this is just why do you so you want to tell about finding the buck? Where did you find him? How big a story do we need here just that found it and how he turned up on a different mountain. So I'll kick it off

and you can finish it. So it's kind of the way it happy first morning we go out and find a good buck and bridgets able to get it killed, and we we go out and start glass and it gets too warm. We take it back to camp. Hey, that was a really good valt. We're gonna go back. Um. We're sitting down there glass and and it was like that magical last forty five minutes. Deer start popping out everywhere,

and we're trying to keep track of them all. And you know, there's a dough, there's a spike chasing a dough, and you're kind of going back and forth all your different groups of the dear well the spike that it chased it dough over. I turned around. I'm like, whoa, that's a lot bigger buck. And uh in the same view of my spotter, he had a real wide um short time three points. So we're like back and forth.

I said that bottom buck is a as a stud, but I said, I think his right side is broken, like something doesn't look right, not adding up, and he's kind of you know, he's broadside to us, and at first he goes to take off, you know, goes to run that dough, and I'm like, holy, holy smokes, he's got like a big long time. I thought he had a drop time. Something just looked weird. Um, and then

he finally slowed down. We were able to like, man, he's got like two fourteen inch points that comes straight up. You've got a big oldye guard. Looks like something going on funk at the base. And he was a real solid eight on the left. And um, we come home like me and Matt run up there, try to get we close the distance of three hundred and um, nothing's left there beside the spike. Every he kind of rund the dough off and we're excited, like, oh, we gotta

play for tomorrow. Um, we're gonna kill that buck. And so we we go there in the morning, end up getting at his buck. And uh so I said, all right, we're gonna I'm gonna climb up there. So I'm in

that three unit yard spot. I'm gonna kill this buck tonight, you know, because um, hey, and what did I tell you that night when you came home talking about this really unique you know, wild racked you know, basically a buck with one normal side and then on the double main beams and an eye guard just really you know, just one of those once in the lifetime bucks I would love to have killed and I said, man, you

need to spend all weeks. Yeah, so I think Clay secretly knew that wasn't his home range and was trying to throw me up. So that night I climb up in there, um glass and you know, just gonna pound that and then uh, I get you know, Steve and Clay and Jason are on a different mountain, and I real faint radio reception. I think we found well, I

don't remember how it came across. I told you, Hey, the buck that you're trying to get, we found him on a totally different mountain in this room, and you try to defend your You try to be like, well you know where where I'm at, Like I'm no, Like

I mean a totally different different mountain. Well, it was so we you had described this buck, and we were so far away from you that the Steve actually said, we've got a chance to see in that deer, but on the other mountain, like out of play, Like we had a chance of glass in the deer, like maybe a mile away, So we weren't hunting that deer, and

we had we had made a big loop. We decided we had gone five or six miles since daylight we'd been out all day and had made a made a big loop and had had a pretty rough day of of hunting, hadn't seen many deer. It's a long story. We did see one buck that we didn't get, but late in the evening we were on a high knob and we had all been glassing for a pretty long time and it was just one of those deals where

this buck was. He was in a very thick area, very steep area, but he was within four hundred and forty yards of us when I arranged him. But on a on a micro level, he was in the wide open. Yeah, he was out of the wind, in the brushy he was. He was in a brush choked hellhole out of the wind. But he was sitting in a spot about as big as this living room. That was. I mean, he was just laying there, bedded. And the second I saw him,

I was like, that's Jason's buck. And I sneak over the hill and give the you know, the cou's deer eyes and hand motions to Steve like big buck over here. And so they come over and we glass the deer. It's a deer we want to shoot, and we slip into three thirty yards and uh, and you know, we were hunting in in a in a team, me Steve and Jason berg bergsman, and um, it's complicated how who gets to take the shot? Because when Jason was gonna shoot, if if it was inside a three yards, I mean,

that's kind of where we were at. And it was. It was it was very windy, and I knew it wasn't gonna be close. Yeah, and so Jason was the shooter, but when it was going to be a further shot, it all of a sudden, I was a shooting. You were the Feds, Yeah, and Jason was Alaska. Yeah, like that's like that. Yeah. And so we slip into three thirties shooting across the canyon pretty pretty still. I would say a ten mile pro across wind. That's what I believe. It was pretty stiff cross wind. And uh, but I

argued that it wasn't all the way. I didn't quite understand that, but I'm with it wasn't where he was because he was out of It's something to get super tricky about wind and ballistics. Man, you're on some peaky and you're in ten mile our cross wind, but you're shooting across the canyon and around the side of a hill. He's in he's in potentially a zero mile an hour cross wind, or he's in the winds wrapping around the hill and in the winds blow in the opposite direction,

or it's blowing down or up. Like everyone wants to take like what's going on with them in mountainous train and then act like that's a constant. Right in certain situations, you could be like, I assume that between me and my target, that wind is the same all the way across. But in this kind of stuff, it's not. It's hard

to like, it's hard to hold for it. So when then when you get into like extreme long range stuff and people are I calculated for the dude, you're when your bullet passed through five different wind circumstances over the year, eight yard shot like the it was, it's been subject to all kinds of stuff you can't even begin to understand between here and there. So we get a really

good rest. I used Steven's tripod, and I've got to say, had I know what it feels like to be nervous for a shot, which I would be, my heart rate would increase, breathing would increase, I'd be nervous shooting it a big deer that I think it's like a once

in a lifetime in couse buck. But I also had the chemical jitters because of a Monster Energy drink that I had drank like an hour and a half before, which I don't drink a lot of Monster Energy drinks ever, but I drank one because we were on the Death March with Steve and and so I'm serious. When I pulled the gun, like walking down there, I was like, my heart is doing stuff that usually doesn't do, and so I wasn't you know, I had a good rest,

YadA YadA, using my patented shooting platform. Yeah, it was good. It was good. And I shoot the first time and missed the buck. We think the buck stands up runs maybe thirty ft. And I had a very difficult time finding him again in the scope because now he's in the brush and I shoot the second time. Problem Yeah, yeah, yeah. Steve was like he's standing there, he standing, did you not see him shake like he shook, well, he jumped up and he and he shook like a dog like

trying to get water off his hide, you know. And anyway, when we went up there I realized that I had shot the non typical horn off of the deer. The first shot had missed high, high and left and had shot off Jason's beautiful fourteen age spike. And uh, I think the deer had felt a like an unusual jar to its head, went out there and kind of gave a little shake and uh, and then the second shot

I hit him and does it. It's been struggling for the right word because I was saying, it's not irony, but yeah, it's like the thing he's known for, the thing I wanted the most, get the shot off. Yeah, I can't think of that. There's the gap in the English language. Yeah, we need for what happened? Good point. Yeah, Yeah, I don't know. But in the end, I'm very very thankful you because where you killed him was his home

range I would still be to this day. They were sitting in that one little drainage waiting for him to repay it. So you know, Jason ended up killing an even bigger dear two days later, just in the like, almost within sight of where I killed this deer. And uh, Jason and I, being old cous deer man like we are, we decided that if you're gonna kill a big cous dear, you need to be close to a red and white

radio tower. Because every big cousier we've ever killed, it's been right by a big red and white radio tower. So that's our tip of the week. Yeah, So I think if you if you're gonna market you know, a cous deer hunt was Stephen Ronella and the Metiator team. It's not a big market. This is an exclusive event, which I'm very appreciative for, but I think I would also, you know, describe it as you know, it is a team effort. I had no idea that you would break

into groups. I envisioned myself alone on a mountain making poor decisions. We're having to having to make judgment calls that I'm you know, we're would be questionable. So with Bridget and Jason Phelps and I, I mean, it was truly a team can all in team effort, and we each spotted each other's deer, which I think is a cool dynamic. Um, it's as much strategy as it is you know, making plays and and uh, there's so much risk in every decision you make and so many opportunities

for things to go sideways. Um, we even had. You know, Bridget could tell a story. Bridget had a mountain lion siding that came down and ran right across our field. One bride, badass. Let me hand. We were Matt and I had already tagged out. So we were on a mission for Phelps to find him a big buck that day, and we did. Jason found a giant buck that day. Beautiful time point, I think. And at the time I pulled up my range finder because I wanted to see

how far it was. I'm looking at all this through my range finder and I panover to find the buck and there's a mountain lion in the same view and no one else has said anything. And I was like, I told these guys had zero chill. It's like, turns a mountain lion, what are you looking at? And he was stalking the book that Phelps was after. And so I actually watched this what I believe to be a huge tom stalk and chase off his book. Change tactics followed dough and do like a double arm swipe at

this dough. She just tucked her button got away. How much did he miss? By? And this was he was size bigger than the deer noticeably bigger than the deer. And this this was on in the spand longer and thicker than broad from tip to tail. And because these deer these does especially under a hundred pounds. Yeah, they're small deer, but the entire hillside lit up. It was like they were like thirty deer. We didn't know that suggestions and the cat stuck around for a little while too,

so these guys finally spotted it. And we're watching all this from about four yards and then he continued to make plays continue like I'm sure he was like Jason on the mountain. When I told him I killed his buck, cat just like stood around. We went back to cat Hill and that's where ultimately Phelps killed his buck. It's nothing, you guess. It was interesting is there were some cattle that never even lift their heads so unfaced. The cat ran right past him. They just kept feeding, scrambling a

everywhere and nuts. Because Bridget when she was range finding, had lost a buck until we like I got her back on. He's up by the dead yucka and in that view was my buck or that buck a cow and then the cougar and that that cow did not care that buck. He was out of there. He just it ran by him two yards away. The cowboys here, uh, we were asking about the you know and very very broken Spanish. Um. We hacked our way through figuring out that there are a problem only on the caves on

the calves, not a problem on the grown ups. I had a very good moment with with the with the cowboy out here though, telling them about your story of the mountain line. Oh, he understood it completely. I was like, Poma vanana, big hand motions, banana. And then I said, but he didn't get it, you know, And I was like like, oh, it's very cool. It was one of the coolest things I've seen in the woods, you know what.

We everybody good, Yeah, thank you in the awesome trip. Thanks, it's been good alright, everybody, thanks for joining